At a pair of special press events in London, UK, and New York City, New York Taiwanese smartphone-maker HTC Corp. (TPE:2498) unveiled its next generation superphone, which it dubs "HTC One". Falling behind Apple, Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) in the sales and image race, HTC is looking to take a step forward with Se the new smartphone.

The phone is encased in a slick aluminum unibody, and has a back mic to help remove ambient noise, similar to the iPhone. The antenna is built into the body. It weighs 143 g (vs. 133 g for a Galaxy S III), but that weight is partly accounted for by a beefier 2300 mAh battery, which should improve battery life. It is 9.3 millimeters thick (vs. 8.6mm for the Galaxy S III or 7.6 mm for the iPhone 5).

Building on HTC's accoustic differentiation, the new 4.7-inch smartphone packs BoomSound -- dual stereo speakers. It features a powerful quad-core 1.7 GHz Snapdragon 600 series processor from Qualcomm, Inc. (QCOM) and 2 GB of DDR2 DRAM. And there's a gorgeous 1920x1080 pixel (1080p) display. Memory stacks up with 32 and 64 GB base capacities -- but no microSD, by the looks of it. Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, and 802.11n standards are all supported.

The camera sensor is relatively large 1/3-inch (bigger than the iPhone 5's sensor). HTC pairs its with its second generation ImageChip, which allows taking still frames from video. The phone uses high dynamic range (HDR) technology to enhance images in diverse lighting conditions.

The HTC One

And there's an infrared blaster that allows the phone to act as a TV remote. HTC calls its remote software "Sense TV".

The phone packs a new HTC Sense UI skin, built on top of the base Android installation. The new skin packs a new live tiles app called "BlinkFeed". The interface looks somewhat like the iOS/Android app Flipboard or the base animated tiles found in Windows Phone.

The handset will be available in March. In the U.S. it will be initially be carried by AT&T, Inc. (T), Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) and T-Mobile USA. It will be also sold at Best Buy Inc. (BBY). Existing HTC customers can trade in their old phone for $100 USD towards the handset.

2300 MAh is plenty for a phone of this magnitude. My EVO LTE could easily hit 2 days on light-moderate usage.

I think the design is really nice. With more and more manufacturers racing to make the next phablet. HTC has realized that a gigantic phone isn't always the best. Staying true to 4.7" is just what I was hoping for.

I'm an extremely heavy user and my galaxy nexus can burn through its battery very quickly, its my main gripe with it. It is also one of the key features I will be looking for in my next phone. I don't need more processor speed, focus on giving me better battery life.

That's not exactly a groundbreaking observation. Every manufacturer knows that.

The reason that they're all trying to put out some big phones is that it's a high margin market that was quite underserved until the Galaxy Note arrived, and even today Samsung pretty much owns the whole market and is making a killing.